American families are not sufficiently nor correctly saving for college. That is MarketWatch’s Catey Hill’s assessment of Sallie Mae’s “How America Saves for College 2014” study. This causes us great concern because, as tuition costs continue to escalate, future undergraduate and graduate students and their families will fall even further behind than they are today.

For many, achieving the perfect body is a lifelong quest. Whether skinny and wanting to gain muscle or husky and wanting to trim down, it comes down to calories in and calories out. Being in picture-perfect financial shape is similar in that it comes down to money in and money out. 

When striving for that perfect body we’re too often concerned with burning calories on the treadmill or stair climber and not focused enough on the calories consumed from alcohol, food and sweets. You didn’t need to drink that bottle of wine last night, did you? Similarly, we’re too often focused on how much money we earn and not concerned enough with how we spend the money we currently make. Did you really need to buy that bottle of wine last night?

It’s sure easy to mock the “one percent” and the “one percent of the one percent” these days. I mean, when they compare their plight to Jews in Nazi Germany and claim they’re rich simply because they work harder than the rest of us, what do they expect. It may be true that they work harder than the rest of us, but saying it outside of their head is just as moronic as those who claim life is hard because they’re beautiful. 

The truth is many wealthy people become so through their own volition. Many did work hard and smart. Sam Zell is right that the rest of us would do ourselves a favor if we spend as much time emulating the “one percent” as we do bashing them. That is what we’re going to do here.